


Avatar: The Saga of Shen

by eyeslikegold (fuentes)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Continuation, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-11-30 09:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11460621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuentes/pseuds/eyeslikegold
Summary: Shen can't bring himself to revere Avatar Korra.Not when she left the consequences of a series of haphazard decisions to him; not when she severed his connection to what should've been his past lives, not when she combined two conflicting worlds and decided the collision didn't need mediating, and especially not now, when the Equalist Revolt that she had supposedly crushed nearly fifty years ago is gaining new ground.In a last ditch effort, he runs away from the Order of the White Lotus to become a fully-realized Avatar in the way that his predecessors had before him: by traveling the world and learning how to bend each element in the nation it originated from. He learns from the descendants of Avatars both distant and immediate, and forges his own identity not as Avatar Korra's successor, but as a source of stability in a world craving balance.(and yeah, the title is /definitely/ a working one)





	1. Food for Thought

He was tired of reading about past lives that he'd never get to meet.

The fledgling Avatar sat with his legs crossed in the center of the enclosed pavilion, surrounded by books both open and closed. As more of them were dropped in front of him, Shen dragged his eyes up to the man standing before him. "Master Bolin, I can't read those," he said, waving his hand toward the newest stack. "I've been reading _all day._ I haven't even done any actual bending in two days."

He'd hope to get some sympathy out of his teacher but all he did was laugh. "I know," the older earthbender replied. "If I had it my way, you'd have started metalbending by now, but the Order of the White Lotus wants you to have 'extensive knowledge of your past lives'. Other Avatars had to do it, too."

Shen thought about saying something, but instead he balled up his fists and unclenched them as he exhaled. He doubted that anyone made Avatar Kyoshi sit down and read about her past lives for hours on end — really, he doubted anyone ever _made_ her do anything — but arguing with his earthbending teacher about it wasn't worth the energy. "I guess," he said after a few moments. "Which Avatar are these about?" 

He shrugged, picked up the book topping off the stack, and answered, "Looks like they're about Avatar Aang."

Upon hearing the name, Shen's thick brows raised, though he wasn't sure why he was so surprised. He knew that he was supposed to move on Aang after he had learned all there was to know about Avatar Roku, but finally getting there still came as a bit of a shock to him. "Thanks, Master Bolin," he said in earnest. "I should probably start reading now."

"That sounds pretty good to me."

As the elderly man walked off, he grabbed the next book on the stack and opened it to the first page. He looked at the doodles in the margin for a while before beginning to read. The first chapter talked about the Air Nomad Genocide, and he flipped through it and the following chapter absently. _Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads, it was a real dirt bag move,_ the earthbender thought to himself. He began to pay attention in the third chapter, when Aang and his two friends Katara and Sokka started their journey to the Northern Water Tribe. The black-haired teen couldn't exactly say he was jealous — they were being hunted down by the prince of the Fire Nation the whole time — but traveling the world was more appealing than being kept in a compound until he mastered all four elements. 

He devoured the book in just under an hour, bending the corners of pages he found interesting and occasionally changing position when his feet felt numb. Just as he finished the last page, the gong calling him to dinner rang throughout the courtyard. Quickly, he shoved the book into his jacket and buttoned it up before rising to his feet and jogging towards the compound's main building.

 

* * *

 

Shen pushed the lettuce in his bowl back and forth and looked around the table. His mother was to his right, Master Bolin was across from him, and the head of the Order of the White Lotus, a middle-aged woman from the Fire Nation called Master Radha, was to his left. They were all talking about his progress in earthbending, occasionally pausing to ask him how he felt about a particularly difficult stance or an easy move. He half-listened and kept his focus down, on what had been a plum salad until he ate all the plums. The book about Avatar Aang was nice and cool against his stomach and he wondered why he tried to hide it in the first place.  _It's just a book,_ he thought. _If anything, they'd be happy._ Still, he kept it in his jacket, not wanting to explain  _why_ it was there. Undoubtedly, the three adults around him would have questions.

He had mostly tuned out their conversation but he began to pay more attention when the subject of airbending was brought up. Fall was about to end and he had yet to learn the art — due to some reason unknown to Shen, the Order of the White Lotus had decided to put his airbending training off a year and that he would learn about the history of the Avatar and his past lives instead. He listened intently, hoping that somehow the Order of the White Lotus had changed their minds and that he would be allowed to begin his airbending training, only to find himself disappointed.

"Unfortunate as it is," Master Radha said, "we'll still be holding off on Shen's airbending training for another year." 

Shen watched her take a long sip of her tea and heard the murmurs of understanding from both his mother and Master Bolin. He was upset for a moment, then something he hadn't thought about in months crossed his mind again. "So when will I start my waterbending training?" 

Their guilty expressions surprised him. He'd thought it was a simple question, but that didn't look to be the case. Master Radha turned to his mother, who turned to Master Bolin, and they all seemed to silently say to each other, "So who's going to tell him?" 

His mother was the one to do it. She always was. "You won't start your waterbending training for another year," she answered. Shen could tell from the heaviness in her voice that she knew how upset her answer would make him, but he couldn't help but to be upset.

"You can't be serious," said the teenager. He tried to keep his voice down, but he still grew louder. "You keep pushing this stuff off just so I can sit around and _read._ I should be learning how to airbend right now but instead you all make me read books about my so-called 'past lives.'" He was fuming by now and as much as he wanted to calm down, his frustration had found an outlet and refused to be contained, so he went on, "What's going to happen next, huh? Are you going to push my firebending training off for _two_ years? Am I going to be the only Avatar who only knows one element? Why do you —" 

His mother grabbed his wrist and with a look that could Shen thought force a dragon into submission, said, "Shen, _sit down_."

He sat down almost instantly, heat rising up his face as he looked at the three adults before him. Only in Master Bolin's face did he find sympathy. The other earthbender was the first to say anything after his outburst. 

"He does have a point," he announced. Shen could see the confusion on Master Radha's face as she stared at the older master. "The reading is fine, it's great — 'hooray, reading', I always say — but he does need to know the other three elements because otherwise, he's just a scrawny kid from the Earth Provinces who can move some pebbles around."

Shen laughed. He saw his teacher's attempt at defusing the situation, but it seemed to go over Master Radha's head. "With all due respect, Master Bolin, I have never heard you say 'hooray, reading,'" she retorted, "and the two of you are acting like he'll never learn any of the other elements. He will, just after he spends a few months educating himself. Korra went into the world woefully uneducated and made decisions that were less than savory, at best. It's never hurt anyone to have an extra year or so studying."

"Besides, the decisions have already been made neither of you are thinking of the logistics of this," the woman went on.  He knew by then that he had gotten his hopes up for nothing. Once Master Radha mentioned logistics, he knew he'd lost, regardless of what the conversation was. "One, Shen has to learn the elements in seasonal order. Fall is almost over, so he'll just have to wait until next fall. Two, how could we find a waterbending master willing to move here and train him on such short notice? We can't, that's how."

Shen turned to Master Bolin, hoping he would jump to his defense. Instead the earthbending master merely shrugged, so he turned to his mother, whose dark green eyes implored him to accept the situation and just let it go. He decided that he would do no such thing.

"I'll be in my room if you need me," he growled after rising to his feet. As he stormed out of the room, the steady thump against his abdomen reminded him of the book he'd hidden in his jacket, but he couldn't care any less about it anymore. The only thing he could think about was the feeling of betrayal swelling in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm just an atla/lok fan who thought the writing in legend of korra left a lot of things to be desired so i took those things and made a fic about them. this chapter is a little on the shorter side but i expect that they'll be longer once the story picks up. hope you enjoy :)


	2. Linear

Shen only stopped to think once he had slammed his bedroom door shut behind him. As good as fuming at dinner had felt, it seemed more childish than defiant. What was done was done — he did make a mental note to apologize to Master Radha, though, but only to avoid being forced by his mother to do it. He decided to apologize to her and Master Bolin, too, since his ranting had also been directed towards them, and he'd make his rounds in the morning before breakfast.

He fished the book out of his jacket and fell backwards onto his bed. His room was nothing special. There was room for a bed, a nightstand, a small wardrobe, and not much else. Still, it had been home for a little under a year and he'd managed. He had used his bending to manipulate the stone walls and formed floating shelves and pegs for his clothes, and there was the poster of Avatar Korra he had put up when he first moved to the compound at age twelve, when he still thought of her as a hero.

Now his feelings toward her were _complicated_. He had loved her as a kid, and being told that he was, in a way, her was a dream come true. The sixteen year-old still remembered the day the Order of the White Lotus came to his village. He was only eight, but he still remembered the roar of their airship as it touched down just outside the fields, the excited yells in the streets as they strolled through them, and the thick air of anticipation as they came to a stop in front of his house. His mother made him to comb his hair 'just in case' and put on his nicest clothes, he recalled with a laugh. He even remembered the tired looks of the sentries flanking the graceful old woman who told him to call her Asami. She had held out a box filled with toys and told him to choose one, and instead, he'd grabbed the blue betrothal necklace nearly hidden under a stuffed platypus bear. 

He thought it looked nice, like something his mother would like to have, but something inside of him had compelled him to hand it to Asami. "This is yours," he had said. 

She was smiling at him when she said it: "He's the one — the next Avatar."

The first thing he noticed afterwards was the relief on the sentries' faces. Looking back, he knew that they'd probably gone through thousands of villages all over the Earth Provinces to find the Avatar and were just glad it was over for them, even though his own journey was just beginning. From that day on he had spent hours reading about Korra, naively wondering if he'd remember the events the books described. He had nearly started foaming at the mouth when Master Radha introduced him to Master Bolin, he was so excited. 

But he wasn't twelve years old anymore. Now he knew what the books on Korra's adventures didn't seem to tell him about: the consequences. As her successor, he was the one people would look to to clean the rough edges she had left behind. He wondered if he would ever be recognized as anything other than the Avatar following her, the one who was so busy fixing things and putting them back in order that he never got to do anything of his own. 

Then again, wasn't that all the Avatar was supposed to do? Keep things in order? _Maybe Korra was just an outlier_ , he reasoned. _I probably could've asked, if she hadn't ended the cycle._

He ran his hands through his jet black hair and sighed. "Being upset about it isn't going to bring them back," he told himself, "as great as _that_ would be."

There was a knock at the door, and he instinctively called out, "Come in."

Master Bolin shuffled into the room, whistling so off-key that Shen wasn't entirely sure it was a song. "Hey-o, bud," he greeted. "You seemed pretty heated at dinner so I just wanted to come by and make sure you weren't, you know, angrily firebending all over the place." 

Shen laughed. "I'm good now, sorry 'bout that," the boy added quickly. "I'm not 'angrily firebending all over the place' or anything, mostly 'cause I can't even firebend, but is there even a way to firebend and  _not_ do it angrily?"

"It depends on who's doing the said firebending," Master Bolin answered. "Radha doesn't look too angry when she does it, but my brother, on the other hand... no, Mako doesn't count. He does everything angrily. He even eats noodles angrily."

"Really?"

"Yep. Tears 'em apart like they insulted our grandma. It's a real crime. But seriously, are you alright?"

He thought about telling the truth but it seemed rude to insult one of his closest friends who also happened to be dead. "I'm good," he assured his teacher. "I just have to get ready for another year of reading."

"They just want you to know stuff so you can be a good Avatar, like Korra over there." When the old man pointed to the poster hanging over the dresser, Shen couldn't look him in the eye, nor could he tell Master Bolin that he was just flat out wrong.

"Yeah," he lied, "just like Korra." 

They sat in thick, awkward silence for what felt like ages. It was Master Bolin who spoke first. "Well, I should go," he said with a yawn. "Old people such as my self need as much sleep as we can get, so I'll see you in the morning, kid."

Shen watched him leave, glad that Master Bolin had closed the door behind him. He turned onto his side, grabbed his book, and opened it to the first bunny-eared page. As he began to go through the book one more time, he wondered what Avatar Aang would tell him to do about his frustration but he pushed the question out of his mind and kept on reading.

"'As the Avatar and his friends began their journey north, they stopped at Kyoshi Island,'" he read aloud, "'the former home of Avatar Kyoshi that she separated from the mainland.'" He looked at the world map next to the poster of Korra, curious to see where Kyoshi Island was located. The dark-haired boy rose to his feet and crossed the room in three long strides, book in hand. A red dot marked the location of the compound, just outside of Zaofu. He traced a line from the dot to Kyoshi Island, surprised at how short the distance was. 

"That's just a train and a boat ride," he noted, "not too bad." 

As Shen stared at the map, an idea formed in his head. The longer he mulled it over, the more feasible it became. He remembered correctly, he had about a week before he needed to put his plan into action. He grabbed a nearby pen with his free hand and drew two straights lines on the map, one from Zaofu to Kyoshi Island and one from Kyoshi Island to the Southern Water Tribe — that would be his route. "I'll need a train schedule from Zaofu," he said, "and some clothes... maybe some food, too. Oh, and yuan. I'll need a lot of that." 

He had never been a big traveler. The furthest he had ever gone was the thirty or so miles from his village to the compound, and that had been in an airship, but he was sure that riding a train and a few boats couldn't be too terrible. As for the schedule, he could just ask a sentry to pick one up for him when they went on a grocery run. Getting yuan was the only part he couldn't figure out, until he remembered the box underneath his mother's bed filled with loose bills and coins. 

He scoffed at the idea, "I can't steal from my own mom." Still, he couldn't see any other way, so as much as he hated, he convinced himself that it wouldn't exactly be stealing, just borrowing. He would pay her back when he returned from the Southern Water Tribe. 

A sentry banged their fist on his door as he contemplated whether or not his mother would be mad enough to kill him if he stole from her. "Lights out, kid."

The earthbender reached over to turn his lamp off but paused halfway. "Could you guys bring me a train schedule the next time you go to the market in Zaofu?" he asked.

"Sure. That's not my job, but I'll tell Kassuk and Liu to pick one up for you when they go tomorrow," the sentry answered. "But seriously, lights out."

"Uh huh."

He turned his lamp off and was left in complete darkness. The light that came through his window wasn't enough to see by, so the rest of his plotting would have to wait until the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like these first two chapters have been pretty short and boring but they'll pick up soon. that's about it but i feel like i should write more so i'll just thank you for reading this :-)


End file.
